World War II (1939–45; war in which Great Britain, France, the Soviet Union, the United States, and their allied forces defeated Germany, Italy, and Japan), the largest conflict the world had seen to date, had come to an end in the blinding flash of an atomic bomb. Yet, the end of this war did not signal the end of hostilities. A new war began, one that was fought both directly and indirectly. It was a war that influenced virtually every significant event or development in world affairs: political, military, economic, and cultural. It was a war about global domination and global destruction. It was called the Cold War (1945–91), and more than anything else, it started the race into space.
By the end of World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union had risen to the status of superpowers. (The Soviet Union, technically the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, was a country made up of fifteen republics, the largest of which was Russia. In 1991 it became fifteen independent states.) These two extremely powerful nations dominated world politics. Their differing ideologies, or set of doctrines or beliefs, brought about a period of mutual fear and distrust that was termed the Cold War.
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